Not surprisingly, the chief purveyor of the latest fairy tale is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who spun it for his GOP colleagues at a Wednesday luncheon.
Here is his argument, which has worked its way into Tea Party talking
points: In November 1995, 51 percent of voters blamed Republicans for
the shutdown; a mere 28 percent blamed then-President Clinton. Every
poll shows that the GOP is being blamed for the shutdown this time as
well. But it’s by a smaller margin than in 1995. Break out the
Champagne.

Not so fast. A new Wall Street Journal/NBC
News poll out Thursday found that the public blames the Republican
Party more for the shutdown than President Obama, by a
22-percentage-point margin (53 percent to 31 percent). This is
essentially the same as the 1995 margin. What will Cruz say now?

It’s
true that Americans are less than thrilled with President Obama and
congressional Democrats. Their approval ratings are nothing to
celebrate. But electoral politics is a zero-sum game. If one side loses,
then the other side wins. Success depends on being just slightly less
odious than your opponent.

With
their shutdown shenanigans, the GOP is making Democrats look more
attractive by the day. Gallup reported that the GOP’s favorability
rating dropped 10 percentage points (from 38 percent to 28 percent
approval) since September, giving it the lowest favorable rating
for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992. As a
comparison, the Democrats dropped only 4 percentage points in the last
month, to a 43 percent approval rating.
Even among the party faithful, the GOP’s unfavorability rose 8
percentage points from September. Democratic Party unfavorables among
Democrats rose only one percentage point during that period.

The Wall Street Journal/NBC
News poll had similar bottom-of-the barrel findings: “24 percent of
respondents have a favorable opinion about the GOP, and only 21 percent
have a favorable view of the Tea Party. Both are all-time lows in the
history of the poll.”

It doesn’t bode well for Republicans that voters in such a conservative state are greeting their antics with such disapproval.

Meanwhile,
the poll found that, “President Barack Obama… has actually gained a bit
of altitude during the shutdown, with 47 percent viewing him
positively, compared to 45 percent in September.” A 47 percent approval
isn’t a great accomplishment. But gaining while your opponents are
dropping is all you need to win in the zero-sum game.

Then
there are the recent numbers for Tea Party leader Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT),
who helped lead the campaign to shut down the government over
Affordable Care Act funding. A Brigham Young University poll found that
Lee’s favorability in Utah has plummeted 10 percentage points (from 50
to 40 percent) since June. Among his own party, approval has dropped to 57 percent from 71 percent.
On whether Lee should compromise with Democrats on a budget, even if
means funding Obamacare, 57 percent of Utah voters polled said
yes. Sixty-five percent of independents and 51 percent of non-Tea Party
Republicans also prefer compromise.

The poll doesn’t appear to be an outlier. Another Utah survey, conducted
by Dan Jones & Associates for KSL-TV and Deseret News, found that
56 percent of Utah voters said it wasn’t worth shutting down the
government to repeal the health-care law. Nearly half reported
disapproval of the Tea Party’s influence on the government shutdown, and
more than one-third expressed disapproval of Sen. Mike Lee. It doesn’t
bode well for Republicans that voters in such a conservative state are
greeting their antics with such disapproval.

As
for Democrats, they just need to keep doing what they are doing. Jim
Kessler, one of the founders of the centrist think tank Third Way, put
it this way to me: “It’s like the two campers in the woods. A bear shows
up and one guy is putting on sneakers and the other says, ‘You aren’t
going to outrun the bear’ and the other says, ‘I just have to outrun
you.’ Right now, Republicans are the barefoot camper.”

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Kirsten Powers is a columnist for The Daily Beast. She is also a contributor to USA Today
and a Fox News political analyst. She served in the Clinton
administration from 1993 to 1998 and has worked in New York state and
city politics. Her writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, The New York Observer, Salon.com, Elle magazine, and American Prospect online.